Re: The world may fundamentally be inexplicable
John,
Strictly speaking, TOE is outside of reach of physics, studying material
changes, their principles, kinds, and interrelationships. The substance of
my arguments is because of the inherent unity of natural forces and their
mutual convertibility in each other, it is quite possible to produce a
unified field theory. That is, there is not any essential obstacle for
consolidating in a single set of equations (the fewest number of
generalities) all the fundamental forces and interactions: electromagnetism,
gravitation, nuclear forces, and the weak forces.
The enormous multitude of specific natural phenomena, the motions of stars,
the oscillations of molecules, the transmission of radiation, the movements
of oceans, the vibrations of air, the waves of sound, the collisions of
galaxies, the collapse of stars, or the transmutations of elements, are
nothing else but observable particular processes and effects of their
generic laws.
Summing up, the unification of natural phenomena under a few fundamental
laws is only limited by the boundary of physical universe. But the
principles of convertibility (or reversibility) and unity of natural
phenomena extends beyond the physical phenomena.
A theory of everything (entities and relations) by definition is the
responsibilty of universal formal ontology (UFO) studying change in general,
its principles, kinds, causes, effects, and relationships.
We need to understand the real meaning of ontology, its subject matter,
methods, applications, and its relations to other field of knowledge,
including physics, in order to get somewhere.
Regards,
Azamat
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>
To: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@BESTWEB.NET>; <standard-upper-ontology@IEEE.ORG>;
"CG" <cg@cs.uah.edu>
Cc: "Azamat" <abdoul@CYTANET.COM.CY>
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 8:38 PM
Subject: The world may fundamentally be inexplicable
> Azamat et al.,
>
> I received an offline note with a pointer to a web site
> of "dangerous questions" -- one of which is a point by
> the physicist Lawrence Krauss that perhaps a "Theory of
> Everything" is impossible, and the only thing that is
> possible is an open-ended collection of "phenomenological"
> theories about the various ways of perceiving the universe.
> (Copy below).
>
> The word "phenomenological" is important because all the
> theories that we have been calling "ontology" should more
> properly be called "phenomenological". They don't really
> explain the ultimate categories of Being (Aristotle's
> most general type, "to on"), but the range of possible
> ways that people (or cats or chimpanzees or computers or
> extraterrestrials) perceive the phenomena of the universe.
>
> Krauss states the hypothesis that perhaps there is no
> ultimate TOE. Penrose makes the point that there may be
> an ultimate TOE, but it certainly won't resemble any of
> our current theories of physics. Just consider how far
> the relativistic or the quantum mechanical views diverge
> from the Newtonian view. Any ultimate TOE will certainly
> diverge from our current theories at least as much.
>
> Summary: Forget the elusive search for an ultimate unified
> ontology because (a) it might not exist, (b) even if it
> did exist, it's not likely to be found for at least another
> century or so, and (c) even if it were found today, the most
> important things we need in our ontology are descriptions
> of the phenomena as we and our fellow earthlings (of all
> species) perceive them. And those phenomena are as varied
> and variable as there are earthlings, species of earthlings,
> and instruments (such as telescopes, microscopes, MRI
> scanners, etc.) for perceiving and recording them.
>
> John Sowa
> __________________________________________________________
>
> Source: http://www.edge.org/q2006/q06_8.html#krauss
>
> The world may fundamentally be inexplicable
>
> LAWRENCE KRAUSS
>
> Physicist, Case Western Reserve University
>
> Science has progressed for 400 years by ultimately explaining observed
> phenomena in terms of fundamental theories that are rigid. Even minor
> deviations from predicted behavior are not allowed by the theory, so that
> if such deviations are observed, these provide evidence that the theory
> must be modified, usually being replaced by a yet more comprehensive
> theory that fixes a wider range of phenomena.
>
> The ultimate goal of physics, as it is often described, is to have a
> "theory of everything", in which all the fundamental laws that describe
> nature can neatly be written down on the front of a T-shirt (even if the
> T-shirt can only exist in 10 dimensions!). However, with the recognition
> that the dominant energy in the universe resides in empty space —
> something that is so peculiar that it appears very difficult to understand
> within the context of any theoretical ideas we now possess — more
> physicists have been exploring the idea that perhaps physics is an
> 'environmental science', that the laws of physics we observe are merely
> accidents of our circumstances, and that an infinite number of different
> universe could exist with different laws of physics.
>
> This is true even if there does exist some fundamental candidate
> mathematical physical theory. For example, as is currently in vogue in an
> idea related to string theory, perhaps the fundamental theory allows an
> infinite number of different 'ground state' solutions, each of which
> describes a different possible universe with a consistent set of physical
> laws and physical dimensions.
>
> It might be that the only way to understand why the laws of nature we
> observe in our universe are the way they are is to understand that if they
> were any different, then life could not have arisen in our universe, and
> we would thus not be here to measure them today.
>
> This is one version of the infamous "anthropic principle". But it could
> actually be worse — it is equally likely that many different combinations
> of laws would allow life to form, and that it is a pure accident that the
> constants of nature result in the combinations we experience in our
> universe. Or, it could be that the mathematical formalism is actually so
> complex so that the ground states of the theory, i.e. the set of possible
> states that might describe our universe, actually might not be
> determinable.
>
> In this case, the end of "fundamental" theoretical physics (i.e. the
> search for fundamental microphysical laws...there will still be lots of
> work for physicists who try to understand the host of complex phenomena
> occurring at a variety of larger scales) might occur not via a theory of
> everything, but rather with the recognition that all so-called fundamental
> theories that might describe nature would be purely "phenomenological",
> that is, they would be derivable from observational phenomena, but would
> not reflect any underlying grand mathematical structure of the universe
> that would allow a basic understanding of why the universe is the way it
> is.
>